Awakening Seed uses the Love and Logic approach in all classrooms and encourages parents to use it at home. The Love and Logic Parent programs are professional programs that have a tremendous reputation for producing excellent results in changing behavior in children and adolescents through changes used in parenting beliefs. Both programs were developed by Jim Fay and Foster W. Cline, M.D. of the Cline/Fay Institute, Inc. of Golden, Colorado.
The main idea of the Love and Logic approach is that children need to learn how to have “real world” learning experiences. The way to have this happen is to NOT protect them from the consequences that come from the mistakes they make in their bad decisions. Parents are trained to consult with their children when they make bad choices while they’re young and the consequences are not expensive and damaging. Rather than getting angry at their child’s mistakes, parents learn to offer empathy and consequences to their children, putting the thinking and responsibility right back where it belongs, on the child.
Preparing children for the real world is the biggest job parents face. This is what “parenting with Love and Logic” is all about, getting our children ready to leave home at age eighteen, knowing they are not at risk. We want them to look at the real world and say: “I recognize this world! We practiced for it at home!”